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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

This we know about Daron Rahlves: He is the most accomplished American downhill racer of all time. A competitive streak runs so deep in his system that it’s like a thread spun directly into his chromosomal helix.

But can that explain why a 36-year-old father of 2-year-old twins would subject himself to the often violent rigors of ski cross, the newest sport—some would say “blood sport”—on this winter’s Olympic agenda? He already has a hall-of-fame résumé. What else is there to prove?

When we say we're "in the zone," usually we mean the Deli Zone sandwich shop over on Boulder's University Hill. But sometimes we mean we're skiing "in the zone" -- slicing the fall line like a hot knife, thinking not about how tired or old or unskilled we are but about how bomber and awesome and stardom-worthy our skiing is.

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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

In the two World Cup events he entered last year, he registered the third-fastest times in qualifying runs.

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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

But as ski cross grows in relevance and prestige—Olympic acceptance being a key badge of acknowledgement—it is colored by a singular oddity for a new sport: It is growing in a top-down way.

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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

But as ski cross homes in on its true identity, it is increasingly taking on the look and feel of elite-level alpine racing. In bringing ski cross into the U.S. Ski Team family last year, the Americans were putting it on more or less equal footing with the national alpine team. But they were actually a little late in doing so, and at times the cross team looks a little like the runt of the litter among national teams. The 2008–2009 team, for example, consisted of three funded athletes (Rahlves, Puckett and another former U.S.

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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

The clothing controversy is just one example of an underlying cross question: What, exactly, are the rules? There is a rule book, but Puckett, now in his third season, says he’s never read it. He’s not alone. Instead, the de facto rules, particularly regarding on-course entanglements, are essentially framed by a gentlemen’s agreement. “We try not to kill each other,” Puckett explains. Protests and disqualifications are unusual, because to lodge a protest against another athlete would violate that gentlemanly code of conduct. Will this fly when there are Olympic medals at stake?

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The freeskiers who invented it don’t have to like it, but skiercross— make that ‘ski cross’—is now an official, FIS-controlled Olympic event, and former World Cup racers like Daron Rahlves are among the favorites. Burning questions remain, like how baggy should your clothes be, what exactly are the rules, and who’ll win the first gold medal.

Although obviously a racing sport, it has slipped into the FIS fold under the “freestyle” rubric. To have a racing event in the realm of judged freestyle skiing is an oddity arising from cross’s history. It’s a sport born and raised in freeriding competitions such as ESPN’s X Games.